John Dickson Carr’s The Three Coffins (AKA The Hollow Man)

John Dickson Carr’s The Three Coffins (also published as The Hollow Man) is a 1935 Dr Gideon Fell mystery and it is of course a locked-room mystery. And a very celebrated one.

Carr was rather unusual among golden age crime writers in combining a love for the rigorous plotting and implacable logic of the detective story with an equally intense love for the more outré elements of gothic fiction. The remarkable thing about Carr is that he consistently managed to combine these two somewhat contradictory elements so successfully.

The Three Coffins begins in classic gothic style. Professor Grimaud has devoted his life to the study of the occult but he is a very convinced skeptic on the subject. A rather strange individual accosts him at his favourite tavern. This man, Fley, makes some extraordinary claims, claims which appear to be most definitely of an occult or at least a paranormal nature. The claims also sound decidedly like threats.

Then we switch to the classic locked-room genre, Grimaud is murdered. The murderer could only have left the room in which the slaying took place by one of two exits. A quick glance at the window makes it clear that he could not possibly have left by this means. Therefore he must have left by the door but the door was found locked from the inside and was for the whole time during which the murder took place under direct observation by two independent witnesses. Therefore he did not leave by the door either. All this is bad enough but there’s also the matter of the footprints which must be there but they aren’t.

The second murder is even more impossible. A man is shot at close range in the middle of a public street in front of three witnesses but no-one sees the murderer.

Meanwhile the gothic atmosphere keeps creeping back in, with hints of dark deeds in Transylvania (!) and freshly dug graves.

There are magicians, acrobats, amateur criminologists, dusty scholars and mathematical whizz-kids and there are mysterious females with shady backgrounds and any one of them could be the murderer.

This book contain’s Dr Fell’s famous locked-room lecture. Dr Fell justifies this lecture by reminding the other characters that they are after all characters in a detective story so why shouldn’t they discuss the mechanics of detective fiction?

In fact the whole book can be thought of as a detective story about detective stories. There’s a good deal about stage magic in it and a locked-room or impossible crime mystery is after all essentially an exercise in stage magic. The writer is an illusionist, practising the various facets of the craft of illusionism (such as misdirection). Carr is in a sense letting us in on some of the secrets of the trade. It’s a measure of just how confident he’d become by this time - he felt sure he could tell us how his tricks were done and that he could still deceive us.

Magic really is a major theme here, with Grimaud being the expert in real magic (which doesn’t exist) and Fley being the expert in fake magic (which does exist). Illusionism crops up in countless golden age mysteries but I can’t recall any other examples of the theme being explored with the same mixture of intelligence, perceptiveness and playfulness that Carr brings to the subject.

One of the points made in Fell’s lecture is that readers are often disappointed when a really intriguing locked-room mystery turns out to have a simple explanation. There’s no need to worry about that in the case of The Three Coffins - the solution is fiendishly complex. But does it actually work? It was certainly a gamble on Carr’s part - one false step and the whole edifice of the plot would have come crashing down around his ears. I think he gets away with it, although it’s a close-run thing. Which in some ways makes the book even more impressive, since Carr was challenging himself as well as the reader. You get the feeling that Carr loved writing puzzle-plot detective fiction not because it was easy (as so many foolish critics then and now seem to think) but because it was something that was exceptionally difficult to do well.

The Three Coffins is breathtakingly ambitious and it’s also hugely enjoyable. Highly recommended.

Carter Dickson's The Judas Window

The Judas Window, written in 1938, is one of the more celebrated Carter Dickson mysteries featuring the delightful H.M. (Sir Henry Merrivale).

Carter Dickson was of course John Dickson Carr so you won’t be surprised to hear that this novel includes a locked room puzzle. This is however a locked room mystery with a difference. The essence of the locked room sub-genre is that the body of the murder victim should be found in a room that is locked from the inside so that  the murderer could not possibly have made his escape. In this case the police are faced with a much simpler problem. The murderer is found locked in the room with his victim. There can be no doubt whatsoever of his guilt. The arrest is made and when the case comes up at the Old Bailey no-one has any doubt that a speedy conviction will ensue and that Jimmy Answell will be hanged.

The only puzzling thing is that Answell’s defence counsel, the irascible Sir Henry Merrivale KC, seems quite confident that he will secure Answell’s acquittal.

Jimmy Answell, a wealthy and quite respectable young man, had been engaged to be married to Mary Hume. Jimmy had been summoned to the London home of Mary’s father, Mr Avory Hume, to receive his formal blessing to the union. Jimmy arrived at 6.10 pm. By 6.30 pm Avory Hume was dead, with an arrow through his heart. Avory Hume had been an archery enthusiast and the arrow, a much-prized trophy, had been affixed to the wall of his study. It is clear that the arrow had not been fired from a bow but used as a dagger. Jimmy’s fingerprints are on the shaft of the arrow. Raised voices had been heard emanating from the room. The two men had obviously quarreled and Jimmy had stabbed his prospective father-in-law with the arrow. It’s as close to being an open-and-shut case as one could ever hope to encounter.

In spite of all this H.M. not only intends to fight the case, he intends to win.

I must confess that I have mixed feelings about locked room mysteries. Even in the hands of a master like John Dickson Carr they can be a little contrived. In this instance however locked room mystery is only one element in a plot constructed with fiendish ingenuity. And it is by no means the most impressive aspect of the plot. There is another crucial element that (in my opinion at least) easily surpasses it in cleverness.

A great golden age detective story requires more than an ingenious murder. It has to conform to the conventions of the fair play mystery which means that not only must the reader be provided with all the clue necessary to solve the puzzle, the way in which the detective uses those clues to unravel the mystery must be plausible and logical without any wild leaps of intuition. The Judas Window succeeds admirably in this regard.

Courtroom scenes can be a little risky - they can be talky and a trifle dull if not handled carefully. Even Erle Stanley Gardner, the grand master of courtroom dramas, generally kept his courtroom scenes in reserve for a vital moment. In The Judas Window Carr chooses a particularly daring option - virtually the whole book is courtroom scenes. It’s a gamble that pays off. A significant chunk of the story is told through the testimony of various witnesses but Carr is able to make it consistently vivid and entertaining. Of course it helps that H.M. is even more fun than usual when he’s in full cry in court. 

It’s to be expected that Carr’s plotting will be top-notch but in this book he also manages to make the motivations of all the suspects (not just the murderer) believable. The actual motive for the murder is perfectly convincing.

This is Carr in very good form indeed. He gives us a carefully constructed and very satisfying plot with a good locked-room mystery component. There’s a judicious leavening of humour but it’s never overdone. The Judas Window is representative of the golden age detective story at its very best. Highly recommended.